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community service --- appropriate technology --- community empowerment --- sustainable development

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community empowerment --- community services --- community engagement --- community education --- Social service --- Benevolent institutions --- Philanthropy --- Relief stations (for the poor) --- Social service agencies --- Social welfare --- Social work --- Human services

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Poverty has remained stubbornly high in Africa for decades. Top-down plans and donor driven investment programs have been less than successful. Past experience suggests that decentralization will not work without vibrant, participatory communities. And enhanced participation will at some point need a local government structure for sustainability. The two can evolve together dynamically, strengthening one another. The new vision seeks to put local governments and rural and urban communities in driver's seat, and give them a new set of powers, rights, and obligations. These include: the right to be treated as people with capabilities, not objects of pity; the power to plan, implement, and maintain projects to serve their felt needs; the right to hold politicians and officials accountable; the power to command local bureaucrats instead of being supplicants; the power to hire, pay, and discipline all who provide them with frontline local services like education, health, municipal, and agricultural services; the right to a share of central government revenue; the power to levy user charges and local taxes; the obligation to enable women, ethnic minorities, the poorest, and other long excluded groups to participate fully in economic development; and the obligation to be accountable to local people, not just central governments or donors. To embark on local empowerment, one need first to enunciate its key principles. One can then consider the main elements of a set of interventions to enhance participation and decentralization, tailored to the stage of development in each country.

Accountability --- Capacity Building --- Community Development and Empowerment --- Community Driven Development --- Community Empowerment --- Community-Driven Development --- Decentralization --- Gender --- Poverty --- Social Development --- Social Inclusion

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In Localizing Development, Mansuri and Rao survey theory and evidence for development strategies based on local community empowerment. This note extends their theoretical argument by focusing on local government as a vital source of new leadership. Local leaders who provide better public service can prove their qualifications for higher office, but new competition from popular local leaders may be against the interests of incumbent national leaders. Thus, decentralization reforms that could benefit economic development may face powerful resistance. International assistance should promote a balanced development of local and national governments, along with a free press to monitor government at all levels. To better inform public discussions of decentralization reforms, the World Bank should actively support research on comparative subnational politics.

Decentralization Reforms --- Development Strategies --- Economic Development --- Economic Theory & Research --- Governance --- Governance Indicators --- Local Community Empowerment --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Parliamentary Government --- Public Investments --- Public Sector Corruption and Anticorruption Measure --- Public Sector Development

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Local and Community Driven Development (LCDD) is an approach that gives control of development decisions and resources to community groups and representative local governments. Poor communities receive funds, decide on their use, plan and execute the chosen local projects, and monitor the provision of services that result from it. It improves not just incomes but people's empowerment and governance capacity, the lack of which is a form of poverty as well. LCDD operations have demonstrated effectiveness at delivering results and have received substantial support from the World Bank. Since the start of this decade, our lending for LCDD has averaged around USD 2 billion per year. Through its support to local and community-driven programs, the Bank has financed services such as water supply and sanitation, health services, schools that are tailored to community needs and likely to be maintained and sustainable, nutrition programs for mothers and infants, the building of rural access roads, and support for livelihoods and micro enterprise. This eBook brings together the thoughts and experiences of many of the leading proponents and practitioners of LCDD, a phrase that evolved from Community-Driven Development, and most clearly describes the process of empowering communities and their local governments so they drive economic and social development upwards and outwards. This, too many, appears as a new paradigm, though it has actually evolved over the decades, since it emerged from India in the 1950s. While many LCDD projects have taken root, the key challenge now is how such islands of success, that is, the discrete LCDD projects, can be scaled up into sustainable national programs that build skills in decision-making, management, and governance.

Accounting --- Agriculture --- Audits --- Autonomy --- Capacity Building --- Civil Society --- Civil Society Organizations --- Community Development and Empowerment --- Community Empowerment --- Community Involvement --- Community-Driven Development --- Debt --- Economic Development --- Employment --- Empowerment --- Financial Management --- Housing --- Inflation --- Labor Market --- Lessons Learned --- Municipalities --- Nongovernmental Organizations --- Nutrition --- Private Sector --- Regional Rural Development --- Roads --- Rural Development --- Savings --- Slums --- Social Accountability --- Social Capital --- Social Development --- Social Inclusion --- Social Safety Nets --- Sustainability --- Urban Areas --- Villages